And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure
he drowned himself in the pool.
His body is gone but back here on the lawn
his spirit continues to drool.
An Eskimo showed me a movie
he’d recently taken of you:
the poor man could hardly stop shivering,
his lips and his fingers were blue.
I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes
and I guess he just never got warm.
But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice,
oh please let me come into the storm.
One of Cohen’s earliest songs, included on his first album Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967), it is a good example of his elegant craftsmanship. The emotion expressed undoubtedly belongs to Cohen the man but Cohen the artist, standing outside and “controlling” the work, shows that he knows and has anatomised exactly what is going on. Cohen has performed this song on all subsequent tours, which indicates that he recognises its quality. In the live version included on Live In Concert (1994), he adds the adjective “shabby” to “the details of our honeymoon”.
Our Lady Of Solitude
All summer long she touched me
She gathered in my soul
From many a thorn, from many thickets
Her fingers, like a weaver’s
Quick and cool
And the light came from her body
And the night went through her grace
All summer long she touched me
And I knew her, I knew her
Face to face
And her dress was blue and silver
And her words were few and small
She is the vessel of the whole wide world
Mistress, oh mistress, of us all
Dear Lady; Queen of Solitude
I thank you with my heart
for keeping me so close to thee
while so many, oh so many, stood apart
And the light came from her body
And the night went through her grace
All summer long she touched me
I knew her, I knew her
Face to face
This song, included on Recent Songs (1979), is a longer adaption of the poem ‘All Summer Long’ from Death Of A Lady’s Man (a verse anthology whose title’s slight difference from that of his 1977 album may or may not be significant). The Montreal in which Cohen grew up was a profoundly Catholic city and he cannot fail to have noticed Catholicism’s pervasive Mariolatry. In the creation of a new aspect of the multi-faceted Nôtre Dame we can see that, for all the sensuality of the song’s language, the song has as much a spiritual dimension as a carnal one.
Paper Thin Hotel
The walls of this hotel are paper-thin
Last night I heard you making love to him
The struggle mouth to mouth and limb to limb
The grunt of unity when he came in
I stood there with my ear against the wall
I was not seized by jealousy at all
In fact a burden lifted from my soul
I learned that love was out of my control
A heavy burden lifted from my soul
I heard that love was out of my control
I listened to your kisses at the door
I never heard the world so clear before
You ran your bath and you began to sing
I felt so good I couldn’t feel a thing
I stood there with my ear against the wall ...
And I can’t wait to tell you to your face
And I can’t wait for you to take my place
You are The Naked Angel In My Heart
You are The Woman With Her Legs Apart
It’s written on the walls of this hotel
You go to heaven once you’ve been to hell
A heavy burden lifted from my soul
I heard that love was out of my control
Clearly Cohen has had some interesting experiences in hotel bedrooms although in this song of redemption, included on Death Of A Ladies’ Man (1977), we may take the hotel in question not as a particularly jerry-built edifice but as a metaphorical location.
Please Don’t Pass Me By
(A Disgrace)
I was walking in New York City and I brushed up against
the man in front of me. I felt a cardboard placard on his
back. And when we passed a streetlight,
I could read it, it said “Please don’t pass me by - I am blind,
but you can see
- I’ve been blinded totally - Please don’t pass me by.” I was
walking along 7th
Avenue, when I came to 14th Street I saw on the corner
curious mutilations of the human form; it was a school for
handicapped people. And there were
cripples, and people in wheelchairs and crutches and it
was snowing, and I got this sense that the whole city was
singing this:
Oh please don’t pass me by,
oh please don’t pass me by,
for I am blind, but you can see,
yes, I’ve been blinded totally,
oh please don’t pass me by.
And you know as I was walking I thought it was them who
were singing it, I thought it was they who were singing it, I
thought it was the other who was
singing it, I thought it was someone else. But as I moved
along I knew it was me, and that I was singing it to myself.
It went:
Please don’t pass me by,
oh please don’t pass me by,
for I am blind, but you can see,
well, I’ve been blinded totally,
oh please don’t pass me by.
Oh please don’t pass me by.
Now I know that you’re sitting there deep in your velvet
seats and you’re
thinking “Uh, he’s up there saying something that he
thinks about, but I’ll
never have to sing that song.” But I promise you friends,
that you’re going to
be singing this song: it may not be tonight, it may not be
tomorrow, but one day you’ll be on your knees and I want
you to know the words when the time comes. Because
you’re going to have to sing it to yourself, or to another, or
to your brother. You’re going to have to learn to sing this
song, it goes:
Please don’t pass me by,
ah you don’t have to sing this .. not for you.
Please don’t pass me by,
for I am blind, but you can see,
yes, I’ve been blinded totally,
oh please don’t pass me by.
Well I sing this for the Jews and the Gypsies and the smoke
that they made.
And I sing this for the children of England, their faces
